A
gentle breeze drifted across the heath, lazily tickling the long
fronds of grass into a rippling wave and sending a light cloud of
dandelion seeds over the small group of people at the base of the
hill. Their uniformly black garb stood out against the hazy greens
and yellows of the midsummer's day. From the crest of the hill,
Amphelice watched them huddle together as if the sunshine could harm
them. In the centre of their group, a man in long flowing black
robes intoned over a rectangular hole in the ground. A simple casket
sat beside it, adorned with scarlet flowers that didn't quite match
the countryside surroundings.

The
zephyr brushed a tangle of Amphelice's waist length flaxen hair
over her face. With a flick of her fine-boned wrist, she swept it
aside and continued to watch the little ceremony. Though the wind
carried the priest's words away so that she could not hear them,
she knew the gist of what he said. The usual litany of remorse and
pain laced with a desperate hope that life continued in another
plane. Amphelice had never lost her fascination with the morbid
ritual even though she had witnessed so many.

Why
did they continue to lavish so much attention upon the sorrow of a
loved one's passing? Why couldn't they say goodbye and move on
with their own lives? They had so little time of their own, why
spend so much of it mourning for others?

Time
passed and the people in black drifted away from the grave like
leaves caught in a wayward wind, tugged along by currents that they
could not control. Amphelice supposed life must feel that way to
them. And eventually, those little leaves would wither and fade,
becoming lost in the earth. When none of them remained, still
Amphelice would stand atop the hill and watch a new procession of
mourners huddle around a new hole in the ground.

Her
white dress fluttering in the breeze, she resumed her walk across the
heath. Yorkshire spread out all around her, an undulating landscape
of endless greens under a light blue sky. Far above her head, wispy
clouds streaked across the sky and blurred with contrails into a
white lattice. Unless she looked down into the vales, Amphelice felt
online on the heath, a solitary smudge of white. She walked at her
own meandering pace, delighting in the sensation of grasses under her
bare feet and rubbing against her legs, enjoying the sun's warmth
on her bare shoulders and letting the wind guide her home.

A
proud village had nestled in one of the vales once, long ago. Now
only a few stones remained in the tangle of trees and bushes. Time
had slowly but surely erased Fossley until none but Amphelice knew of
its existence.

She
entered the vale by a wild creature's narrow little path through
the undergrowth. Thick shade surrounded her and from somewhere came
the familiar tinkle of a minute waterfall. Following the path, she
wound her way through brambles towards a small glen. The brambles
left faint scratches on her fair legs but she barely noticed; with
time she had grown accustomed to experiencing lesser pains.

When
she stood in the centre of the glen, old and rotting twigs and leaves
under her feet, a beam of sunlight setting off the golden tones in
her long hair and shining into her pale blue eyes, Amphelice saw the
metre-high waterfall bubbling out from the nook of the vale. She
walked to it and ran her hands under the cool water, letting it run
over her long, fine fingers. From the far distant past she
remembered running out in the early morning to collect water from the
fall, filling her wooden bucket right to the brim and taking every
care on the short walk to her family's rickety home. Until the
winter when the waterfall froze and everyone died. Everyone except
her.

The
craw of a nearby crow momentarily reminded her of the old woman's
cackle. That awful noise, as the wasted woman lay in her filthy,
soiled sheets and laughed at the young woman who had given herself to
a man other than her own. The baby from that deed had died in the
winter, the last of the villagers to be buried. And Amphelice had
sat atop the graves, wondering when she too would join them.

Every
time Amphelice returned to the ruins of Fossley, she wondered if one
day time would finally snatch her away just as it had all the others.

She
sat on a fallen tree for hours, watching motes dance through sunbeams
that had pierced through the canopy above, listening to the ceaseless
tinkling of water and the calls of wild things all around her and she
knew that no, not this time, she would not go this time. Time did
not desire her yet. A broad smile spread across her face and she
danced up, kicking leaves into flurries as she whirled through the
woods, her shrills of delight ringing out with the birds'. Why
fade away when life continued to hold so many hidden treasures?

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